


To Throw The Gauntlet

by cerie



Series: Bachelor Auction [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:37:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shameless porn, inspired by kuwdora's suggestion that Henry and Will be subjected to a Sanctuary bachelor auction. Dedicated to Callie, who is much better than I am at Will by far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Throw The Gauntlet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/gifts).



“You know, last time someone got me to do one of these things I ended up having to give the records clerk a pedicure. Last time I ever did a police charity. Last time,” Will said, waving his hands animatedly and earning a sharp look from Magnus as she tugged at his cuff, fastening a silver cufflink to it with the kind of ease that only a woman of her era would have. They didn’t have those kind of things as long as Will had been wearing tuxes and, considering he just ran down to the local wedding shop and got a rental, they were never as nice as this one.

“Hold still, would you? If it wasn’t in poor taste to auction Kate and I off to some wealthy man,” Magnus said, frowning a little, “I would be doing it myself. As it is, I imagine you and Henry will do just fine with some of the more affluent widows of the city.” Will rolled his eyes and Helen laughed softly, the movement causing a little tendril of hair to escape her elegant twist and her shoulders to roll in a pleasant way. Will stared for a moment before she cleared her throat and he dragged his eyes back to her face.

“Why isn’t Tesla in on the whole meat market thing? I’d think he’d love the opportunity to wine and dine some poor unsuspecting woman.” Will didn’t try to mask the irritation in his tone, figuring he’d be lying to both himself and everyone else if he pretended to like the guy. Magnus fastened his other cufflink and held out his jacket before she spoke, helping him into it and smoothing the shoulders in the way a boss just didn’t do for her employee. Not thinking about that, Zimmerman. Not when you have to go do this.

“Nikola, of course, will be bidding,” Magnus said, amused smirk playing at her lips. “He’s dreadfully disappointed that I’m not on the menu this evening but I think he’ll recover. After all, I managed to wrangle you, Declan and Henry for it, didn’t I?”

Ugh. Will did not want to think about that. He was much happier with the old ladies bidding on him if the other option was Tesla.

“I have so many arguments against this,” Will started, protest dying in his throat when Magnus pressed a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture and gently pushed him into the ballroom.

Here went nothing.

~~~

“So, Helen,” Nikola purred from somewhere in the vicinity of her left elbow, causing Helen to turn suddenly and give him a sharp look. The bidding was about to start and, well, she needed to make sure things went as planned. No sense in sending any of her boys home (if you could consider Declan one of her boys) with someone dreadful and besides, she had the purse to rescue all three of them if need be. She had always liked the competition of a nice bachelor auction, sexist though it might be, and she imagined that said something about her that, upon closer analysis, she might not have liked. Still, no matter. Not when she had more pressing things to attend to, like Nikola trying to out her in public.

“Nothing from you, Nikola. We make an extraordinary amount of money at these things and make connections that can further funding throughout the fiscal year. This is a legitimate business operation, not a meat market.”

She delivered it quickly and sharply and Nikola laughed throatily over what appeared to be his third or fourth glass of champagne. His tolerance was simply not what it’d been when he was a vampire and yet he persisted in drinking to excess. It was equal parts hilarious and sad, given Nikola’s preferred method of problem solving involved her wine cellar. She’d simply have to restock more often.

“Don’t get your Victorian knickers in a twist,” Nikola said, gently circling her wrist with the hand not holding his champagne flute. “I hardly care if you want to drop a few thousand on the boy so you can justify going to bed with him. Whatever helps you sleep at night, Helen. I won’t object, but I will say that I am a far cheaper and more sensible option.”

Helen rolled her eyes and watched not the auction itself, but the audience; while she trusted herself, she always had a few aces up her sleeve.

~~~

Will had never been shy, not really, but there was still something unnerving about being pranced out on a stage in front of about two hundred people, mostly women who were clamoring to get in his pants. He didn’t figure he’d get as much as Henry, who’d ended up taking off his shirt (earning a sharp look from Magnus) and driving the bidding well into the $50,000.00 range and finally settling at $67,435.00, tendered by one Nikola Tesla under guise of Lane Tasklio, which Will thought was one of the dumber guises he could have come up with. Anyone with half a minute to think it through would know it was an anagram; he much preferred the Abigail Fernly that Magnus liked to use.

And now it was his turn and he felt for all the world like a kid at a spelling bee, naming off his qualifications and getting more and more nervous as little old ladies with deep purses drove the bidding higher and higher. Magnus looked a little off, her lips pursed slightly as she watched the bidding, and finally a courier ran up to the auctioneer, some obscene figure scribbled on a sheet of half-folded paper. Will couldn’t see it from where he was standing but it didn’t take long before he knew.

“Telephone bid for $85,000.00. I believe that goes unchallenged, so…more details as they come available, Dr. Zimmerman.”

Oh great. Bid on by some unknown entity. One thing was for sure: he was not giving anyone a pedicure, no matter how old and rich they were. Or how much it’d mean to Magnus. Nope. He’d die for Magnus (and had, twice), take a bullet for her…he was drawing a line. It was just a line in the sand and the wind would probably blow it out like it’d never been there, especially if Magnus needed him, but for now, the line was drawn. Period.

Will stepped awkwardly down from the stage and went to find Kate, figuring she’d at least oblige him in his mission to get extremely drunk before Magnus told him who and what was expected of him. Declan was up there now, women swooning over him left and right, and Will had a date with a very old bottle of scotch. He didn’t figure Magnus would mind too much, given the circumstances.

He was a quarter of the way through the bottle (Glenfiddich, single malt) when Magnus laid an envelope on the table in front of him. The stationery was nice, high-quality ivory linen paper, and Will opened it, lips moving silently as he scanned the page. Short. Succinct. His bidder was pretty tight-lipped and Will didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing; Magnus would know where to send the cavalry if he ended up starring in the next Hostel movie, right?

La Belle Auberge, Saturday, 7 PM. Dress appropriately.

“Guess I’m going to be getting this suit dry cleaned between now and then, huh?” Magnus gave him an enigmatic smile and squeezed his shoulder lightly as she left, skirts swirling along her long legs. He wished it hadn’t been her auction; if there was a wealthy woman over the age of forty taking him home, he wanted Magnus to be it.

~~~

He was in the tux again but he hadn’t had the same help as last time. Big Guy was surprisingly deft at being a man’s valet and between him and Tesla, he was something approaching presentable. Didn’t do anything to dispel the butterflies in his stomach and rather than just take a cab, as usual, he’d opted to have a car drive him from the Sanctuary itself. If he didn’t show back up in a reasonable amount of time, at least Magnus would have had a warning well in advance. My, wasn’t he just the chipper, upbeat guy? Something about this whole situation seemed off and Will, normally perceptive to the point of absurdity, was at a complete loss.

The restaurant was well above his pay grade but that, at least, was expected; the type of people who had $85,000.00 to blow on a date with a skinny psychiatrist were the kind of people who could pay a couple hundred for a meal and still walk away hungry enough to want to snag a burger on the way home. It wasn’t Will’s scene, never had been, but working for Magnus meant sliding into the suit of someone else and wearing it like you’d done it all your life. She demanded no less than perfection from her team and from him, well, he liked to think she held him to a higher standard than even the others. He was her hand-picked protégé, her eventual successor, and Will put a lot more pride in that mantle and that job than he’d ever put into anything before meeting her. It wasn’t just a job, working for Magnus. It was his life. The maitre’d sat him at a secluded table that overlooked the river and Will wondered, yet again, what he’d gotten himself into.

He was studying the menu and trying to decide what he could afford, if anything, when he heard the delicate sound of a woman clearing her throat just above him. He dragged his eyes up, expecting some little old lady who wanted to spend the whole time touching his knee while she talked about her grandchildren, and was pleasantly surprised with a pair of legs that seemingly went on forever. Said legs were clad in black stockings, the kind with the little seam in the back that Will knew ended in a garter belt and weren’t just regular hose, and he lingered for a few seconds before finding the woman’s face.

Oh. Oh.. Oh shit.

“Magnus, I didn’t just leer at you, I swear. I just didn’t know who bought me and I was taking my…” She laughed, a little louder than was normally acceptable in a place like this, but nobody looked up. Looking the way she did and sitting at the table they were sitting at, he didn’t figure the staff would care if she stripped naked and did an Irish jig on the table. Privileges of being privileged, he guessed.

“I paid a nice sum of money for your company, Will. I think you’re entitled to a bit of a look.” Her tone was amused and there was a smirk on her lips, not a frown, and Will relaxed a little. When the waiter came by he was trying to figure out what to order in his limited French (and somehow he didn’t figure that asking where the bathroom was or how to get to McGill University were really going to help him in determining what was good and not so good) and he paused as Magnus ordered, the foreign words tumbling off her tongue as easily as medical jargon. Of course she spoke French; Magnus knew everything, didn’t she?

~~~

Dinner was nice and unsettling and Helen tried her best to make small talk without seeming like the sort of woman who wined and dined and lined the pockets of young men to get them to go to bed with her. They hadn’t had the term until recently, until well after The Graduate had made her squirm in a seat next to James at a cinema back in the sixties, but she felt like the most ridiculous of cougars. Will, she supposed, was fine prey, but she didn’t particularly think of him that way.

It’d been a whim to bid on him and instead of doing it boldly, she’d had the bid submitted anonymously. She knew he found the idea of the bachelor auction to be utterly distasteful and was not looking forward to, even for the benefit of charity, being a lonely woman’s companion for a night. Still, it was the only remotely appropriate way she could get Will in this situation and she’d hoped, both of them outside of the element that the Sanctuary always kept them in, that he’d see her as anything but his boss for the moment.

They tussled over the check for a few moments after the food had been eaten and wine drunk over a shared plate of crème brulee but Will’s pale face and mild look of shock had been the leverage she’d needed to wrest it from him. The terms of the auction had her paying for the date anyway, but Will hadn’t known that, and she’d found his desire to be a gentleman very appealing, even if it’d been marred when he’d seem the sum he was allegedly saddled with after their meal. Very cute, that. It wasn’t something Helen had much of in her life, not recently.

The car that she‘d been brought in was idling outside, Will’s own having returned to the Sanctuary well in advance. Helen motioned him inside and pushed the glass partition up between the backseat and the driver, offering them some modicum of privacy. That done, she settled across the seat, fingers pulling deftly at the straps that held on her impossibly-high heels. Will watched her with some measure of interest and she gave him a soft, private smile, pushing her skirt high enough to flash her garter as she made a show of removing her shoe. Will swallowed thickly.

“Seeing something you’re interested in, Will?”

She barely had a chance to respond before his hands pushed hers out of the way, long fingers grazing over the soft skin exposed at the top of her garters. He hadn’t spoken and neither had she, the moment emotionally charged to the point that she half expected sparks between them of a more literal sort than the figurative one usually conjured in these situations. Oh God, it’d been so long. So long.

She wanted him.

~~~

He wanted her.

It was insane, longing for his boss the way he did, and it’d probably just end up hurting one or both of them but Will couldn’t find it in himself to care when Magnus had her legs splayed across the seat and her skirts hiked up her thighs like that. They were in a car, which he didn’t figure was her style, but he wasn’t going to argue when she was looking at him all heavy-lidded and glassy-eyed. God. Did she know what she did to him? Probably not.

He skated his fingers up her thighs carefully, Magnus making soft little sounds that served as much for encouragement as the words would have been should she have chosen to give them. She’d orchestrated this whole thing just for an excuse to go out with him and while he didn’t really like the implications of Magnus buying his company, could you really donate money to yourself? She probably would have donated anyway, in some form or another, and that was good enough for Will. For now, anyway.

He brushed one knuckle against the front of her panties, surprised that they were already damp. He looked up and met Magnus’s eyes and she let out a short, sharp huff. Her skin was flushed and her hair was loose, curling in soft waves over her shoulders just the way he liked. Will gave her a little smile and rubbed his hand against her a little more purposely, satisfied when Magnus let out another little sigh and slid down a little in the seat, pressing herself against his hand.

“Talk to me,” he murmured, the low tone in his voice something he’d never really used before. What the hell did this woman do to him? He had no idea, considering he’d never even thought about any of this before he met her. He’d never do this before Helen Magnus. Never. Her breath hitched a little and she licked her lips, pressing herself into his hand wordlessly. Oh no. Not gonna work.

“Talk to me, Magnus. Tell me what you want.”

Her eyes drifted shut and she nodded, voice low and thick when she finally spoke. Oh fuck. He was in way, way over his head this time.

“Tease me, Will,” she murmured, hiking her dress up so it more or less bunched around her waist. Her legs were splayed and were perfectly displayed in some of the most amazing black lingerie that he’d ever seen. Black lace, all of it, and it all matched; he figured Magnus matched her lingerie even on laundry day since that was just the kind of woman she was. He suddenly wondered how well his plaid shorts were going to go over. Maybe he could sneak them off when she wasn’t paying attention.

He slid his thumbs just under the edge of the silk, eliciting a sharp hiss from Magnus as she tilted her hips toward him. Will chuckled a little, amused that she’d be this responsive, and bent slightly toward the seat and tugged her toward his mouth. His lips found a sensitive spot on her left thigh and nipped it, just above the line of the stocking, and he whispered there to soothe it.

“What if I got you off and I didn’t even take these off?” he asked, getting a whimper from her and a swell of confidence for his own part. If he could take charge of this, maybe, it could even the playing field. He slid his tongue along the same lines his thumbs had traced moments before, Magnus’s pants only serving to slow him down rather than speed him up. Might as well take as much time as possible.

~~~

He was killing her. Helen was intimately aware of every lurch of the car in traffic, the stop and go of traffic bringing Will closer and closer to her before he pulled away again. The uncertainty of it was maddening and he drew another gasp from her when he hooked his left hand in the material covering her hip, tugging her panties just enough to the side to expose her to him. His breath was hot against her and he waited a few moments, breath coming in short puffs against her clitoris. Another lurch of the car and his lips and tongue were pressed against her.

She was well aware of the light stubble on his cheeks, rubbing so teasingly against her own thighs, and the press of his finger against her had her near to sobbing. It was a long drive, from Old City proper back to the relative seclusion of the Sanctuary and on a Saturday with traffic the way it was, utterly maddening. Will added another finger to the first and crooked them, mumbling lightly against her and teasing her closer to the edge.

“Don’t have much of a drive left, Magnus. Get a move on.” Cheeky little bastard. She arched her hips into his touch, biting down on her lip when he pressed his fingers a certain way and sent anything logical spiraling from her in a long, slow arc. When she came back to herself, her legs were akimbo and her hair a mess and Will was awkwardly perched on his elbows between her legs. His face wore a decidedly-smug look and Helen had to laugh; someone was quite pleased with himself.

“And you?” She waited a beat, wondered exactly where this was going. She felt butterflies in her stomach, a slow, sick pull while she waited to see whether this was just madness brought on by a certain quantity of wine and a rather tedious drive or if there was something there, if Will felt the same pull she felt. He gave her a slow, easy smile and shook his head.

“Not when you paid for it, Magnus. Later.”

Oh.

~~~

They hadn’t talked about it and Will hoped Magnus hadn’t taken that as an insult. He didn’t know what to say, exactly, and he wanted to wait until she was alone and he had his head on straight before he said something that might damage the tenuous relationship they had now. Colleagues? Certainly. Will had no problem working with Magnus and, frankly, couldn’t imagine anything else at this juncture in his life. She’d saved him from a lifetime of stiffs and dead-end department politics. Friends? He liked to think so. He and Magnus had a similar sense of humor. Lovers? That part he wasn’t so sure about.

He waited until everyone had cleared out from the morning meeting and settled on her couch, trying to be a little less formal than in front of and behind the desk. Magnus apparently picked up on that and settled beside him, hip pressed a little closer than she would normally when sitting and having a chat with a friend and colleague. That was promising too.

“I understand why you didn’t go further, in case you were worried I was upset you hadn’t called. I’m not some silly girl to fret over such things.”

It was blunt, to the point, and utterly Magnus. Will loved her for that, especially when he was still embarrassed and tongue-tied to the point of tripping over it. Will nodded and reached for her hand, squeezing it lightly and rubbing his thumb over the back of it.

“I get why you set it up that way, so you didn’t have to worry about rejection,” he started, trying to make sure Magnus understood exactly where he was coming from and that he hadn’t rejected her that night. Will just wasn’t the kind of guy to have sex with a woman in the back of a car, even if it was a very nice car and she was an extremely beautiful woman. And Magnus, well. He was a little sappy where Magnus was concerned, equal parts smitten and protective, and he thought she deserved better than that.

“I didn’t want it to happen there, because I wanted the chance to ask you out myself. You…I get protective about you, Magnus. I’d hate myself if I took advantage of you like that, you know? I’d rather do it on my terms.”

Magnus slid closer, very nearly into his lap. Oh shit. He’d hoped she’d take to his little proposition, but he didn’t expect it quite that much. Or quite so quick.

“Then ask me out already.” Her brow was arched, gauntlet thrown. Will tugged her close for a long kiss and after a few minutes came up for air, brushing his hand tenderly against her cheek and brushing away a soft tendril that had escaped her clip.

“Friday. I pick the place. Borrow something to wear from Kate.” Magnus laughed a little and shook her head, clearly amused.

“I suppose I can acquiesce to that.”

She’d just have to take Kate shopping first to ensure there’d be something acceptable to borrow.


End file.
